Oh, how I wish loved this show the way I thought I would. Tragically, I don’t. It’s not that “Showdog Moms & Dads” is bad or anything, but it’s just not as much fun as it wudda/cudda/definitelyshudda been.

And there are two reasons it’s not what it should have been: First is that the producers are coming off their incredibly addictive “Showbiz Moms & Dads.”

That show just hit every nerve and left you breathless, so the expectation for a similar show about obsessed “parents” of four-footed, fur-covered “kids” was simply too great.

Second – and here’s the real fatal flaw – they tried too hard to find the real-life equivalents of the characters from “Best In Show,” the hilarious Christopher Guest-Eugene Levy mocumentary about the world of showdogs. (Hint: There’s a reason God invented Guest and Levy!)

The dog families here aren’t nearly as funny; mostly they’re just kind of annoying. They were all too carefully picked for their perfection to type and not for their quirky personalities.

I know dog people. I once spent the love interest’s birthday at dog camp – for a week. Now you’re talking strange. Many of the “campers” were on the dog-show circuit, and I ran out of dog camp screaming for a martini.

In “Showdog Moms & Dads,” we have the Bravo-requisite gay couple, who clearly have never shown a dog before in their lives.

They dress their dopey dog in outfits all the time – hardly something you’re gonna see at Westminster.

Then there’s the mean mother with the Australian Shepherds, whom she treats far better than her 10-year-old son. She was obviously picked to remind us of the good old days of “Showbiz Moms & Dads.”

There’s the Weimaraner lady, a real pro who spends most of her time training her dog. Your heart is in your throat when her dog cuts its paw at a party.

There’s a childless couple who are flat-out nutty and take their dog to a vet where some disgusting in vitro fertilization is shown. No thanks.

And finally there’s the whippet couple, dog crazies who proudly exclaim that their dogs are never disciplined but are instead given “time outs” – which is, if you remember, the world’s most annoying, not to mention ineffective, childrearing technique of all time. It was supposed to have died off with the Yuppies.

Week Two is better than Week One, but neither is as much fun really as almost any of the shows on “Animal Planet.”